In Another Universe, We Were Allowed To Be Children. We Could Shut Our Eyes Without Fear Of Shadows Lurking

"it's okay, i can peel back the layers of you until i find the soft and gentle core of you you've had to work so hard to hide"? no. no, it's okay, i know you're hollow; i'm here anyway. you don't have to pretend it isn't masks the whole way down. whatever face you want to wear, i still love you. i don't need you to be good or unflinching or the antonym of violence. if i did, i wouldn't be here. i wouldn't ask that of you.

You have to remind yourself “I did nothing to deserve any of that.” every once in a while to keep that guilt down and rage up.

I AM NOT INTERESTED IN LIVING A LIFE WHERE I COWER AWAY FROM BEAUTY OR GOODNESS BECAUSE OF THE POTENTIAL TO BE HURT. I AM BARRELING TOWARD IT. LIFE IS GOING TO CRACK ME OPEN LIKE A PIÑATA AND I AM GOING TO LET IT.

I heart prey animal rage I love when characters are fucking insane with terror

Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

Abusive parents just love entering our rooms uninvited and then yelling “WHY IS THAT ON THE FLOOR”, thus creating the illusion that it’s perfectly fine and acceptable to intrude in another person’s space and then find any excuse to yell and berate them. Parents will act as if this is because you should be neat, but no, they’re not yelling at us because they want us to be neat, they’re yelling because they want to yell, and (1) object on the floor is excuse enough. Random lash-outs don’t help us be more organized. Random yelling doesn’t inspire us to be neat.

What it does is makes sure that we cannot relax in our own space, that we cannot feel at ease and justified sitting in our own room, or lying on our own bed, without expecting someone to burst in with intention to lash out at us. Our need to be able to relax and rest in our own space is higher priority than us being neat, and to force us to fret over every single object in our room when we should be tending to our own needs, resting our minds and feeling safe, is cruel and harmful.

We should be able to rest and relax, even if we’re in a mess. Our own piece of mind and the needs of our body are more important than maintaining the perfect order. Humans are messy sometimes, it can mean we’re stressed, upset, sick, busy with something else, chasing a dream, chasing little bit of happiness, overwhelmed, function better in mess, desire some creative disorder, or thousand other things, and none of these things is a reason to lash out or berate us. Mess isn’t a crime, it’s not a sin, it doesn’t cause mental illness, it could sooner be a symptom of one. To lash out at a kid for not keeping order is nothing but evil. Let children keep their space as they like. If you want them to know how to be neat then teach them how to organize Without Ever Yelling, and without taking their own little functional space that can be just how they like and prefer, away from them. Does the price of your child’s neatness have to be their mental health? Is it worth forcing a kid to keep perfect order, to take their ability to be calm and safe in their own room? The answer is no. Have some goddamn limit to how far you would sink to lash out at your children.

"It's like a hole in my life, an eight-year hole. That's what I find interesting in people's lives, the holes, the gaps, sometimes dramatic, but sometimes not dramatic at all. There are catalepsies, or a kind of sleepwalking through a number of years, in most lives. Maybe it's in these holes that movement takes place."

—Gilles Deleuze, On Philosophy

Abusive parents keep making you feel like you’ll miss out on something if you leave, like they’re just waiting to become this loving, supportive person the second you turn away from them, it’s maddening how far they’re willing to go to, just to make sure you can’t leave. When a parent changes their face constantly, being loving and nice in one second, and then cruel and terrifying in another, the only “reward” you can get from enduring all the pain and fear is by actually being around for those 5 minutes they might be nice to you! And if you’re not, it feels like you endured all this for nothing, almost like you’re missing out. It hurts.

You’re not supposed to only feel safe around people when they’re in a good mood and when they don’t have specific motives for hurting and manipulating you, you’re not supposed to be enduring horrific tantrums and emotional abuse just to see if in next half hour they’ll decide to turn nice again, it is not humane or normal to act in this way. Good people are good all the time, bad people make you feel confused about who they are so they could keep getting away with all the bad. 

i feel like i‘ve lost my spark and trying to get it back is fucking exhausting